News feminist philosophers can use

Day: March 7, 2012

And in honour of the day, in the southern hemisphere at least, rather than yet another inspirational feminist quote, here’s a bit from from Shad’s ‘Keep Shining’:

“There’s no girls rappin’ so we’re only hearin’ half the truth
What we have to lose? Too much
Half our youth aren’t represented, the better halves of dudes
So we don’t hear about your brain, just your brains
How you rock a fella, Stacey Dash dames
We just need your voice like an a capella
Something in the music’s gotta change
My mom taught me where to keep my heart
My aunts taught me how to sing two parts
My sis taught me how to parallel park
Tried to teach me math but she’s way too smart
My grandma in her 80′s is still sharp
My girl cousin’s an activism at art
They taught me there’s no curls too tight
No mind to bright
No skin too dark to keep shining.

I like that and it made the list of the ‘least misogynistic rap lyrics of 2010.’ The full list of more than 200 feminist certified rap songs is here.

We’ve posted a few times about the trend to gender food. Whether it’s ‘women laughing alone with salads’ or attempts to ‘butch up’ cupcakes, seem food is ripe for gendering. There’s a nice post over at Sociological Images about this that’s worth reading. My favourite is Mammoth Supply company’s attempt to make manly iced coffee, yogurt, and assorted dips.

So you are helping members of some marginalized group understand their experience better. You start to get the sense that they feel your objective perspective is not as good as theirs is. Remember what you learned from Derailing for Dummies.

Don’t worry though! There IS something you can do to nip this potentially awkward and embarrassing situation in the bud. By simply derailing the conversation, dismissing their opinion as false and ridiculing their experience you can be sure that they continue to be marginalised and unheard and you can continue to look like the expert you know you really are, deep down inside!

CONGRATULATIONS, YOU HAVE PRIVILEGE!

Just follow this step-by-step guide to Conversing with Marginalised People™ and in no time at all you will have a fool-proof method of derailing every challenging conversation you may get into, thus reaping the full benefits of every privilege that you have.

The class of derailing might well be larger that the book seems to acknowledge. For example, all sorts of conversations can be derailed by “Did you turn off the stove?” And it is easy to think of similar tactics for political discussions for the web. Still, this is a grand collection!

There’s some controversy over the discussion of false consciousness, and the term seems to me to be being used in too literal a sense.. I love the label, though, and think that “but you see race [or sexism etc.] everywhere” is well understood as a denial of the legitimacy of the perspective of marginalized persons.